A Canadian man pleaded guilty Thursday in New York to running a fraudulent allergy testing service that ran for several months.
Between September 2018 and April 2019, Kyle Tsui, 41, carried out a scheme to deceive his company’s customers by selling food and environmental sensitivity testing services on his company’s website.
The allergy testing company was actively promoting its “highly rated and best-selling sensitivity and intolerance test,” claiming to be able to determine the body’s reaction to “800 different foods and environmental substances” using a simple hair sample.
Investigators discovered that the hair samples were not even analyzed, but simply thrown in the trash once received by Mr. Tsui’s company. Customers would then receive false results, identifying certain foods and environmental factors as “safe” while others were supposedly to be avoided due to customers’ supposed sensitivities.
The Justice Department revealed that Mr. Tsui defrauded more than 88,000 customers, generating nearly $5.9 million through these fraudulent hair tests. Originally from Ontario, the man now risks a prison sentence of more than twenty years as well as a fine exceeding $4 million, according to information reported by the Toronto Sun.